Paolo Soleri Quotes
Paolo Soleri (1919-2013) perhaps more philosopher than architect.
“the most famous architect who never built anything” (according to his critics)
A student of Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1940s, Soleri moved to Arizona with his wife and eldest daughter in the 50s and founded Cosanti, a studio complex where he worked until he died. A few years after arriving in Arizona, and his wife had a second daughter, Daniela. In the late 60s, he developed the concept of “arcology,” a portmanteau of architecture and ecology meant to evoke an idea of a built environment that worked with, instead of against, nature. In the 70s, he founded Arcosanti, an experimental city where he put that utopian, highly attractive concept to the test with the help of the kind of students and acolytes that always seem to surround such figures.
In a 3-dimensional city, man has made a city in his own image, and he becomes a country dweller and a metropolitan man at the same time. “Arcology: The City in the Image of Man” (MIT 1969)
The problem is the present design of cities only a few stories high, stretching outward in unwieldy sprawl for miles. This sprawl literally transform the earth, turn farms into parking lots and wastes enormous amounts of time and energy transporting people, goods and services over their expanses.
Arcology recognizes the necessity of the radical reorganization of the sprawling urban landscape into dense, integrated, 3d cities in order to support the complex activities that sustain human culture.
The city is the necessary instrument for the evolution of humankind.
The cities we build should be like pianos, and their inhabitants musicians. But we need good musicians, or the pianos are wasted
The landscape has become a gigantic domain of the car and this dictates how we behave.
“We have become hyper consumers possessed by materialism, buying our happiness,”
“Materialism is, by definition, the antithesis of green.”
Consumer confidence is inversely proportional to waste reduction
Excessive consumption, per se, is no more than a hindrance. But multiply that hindrance by billions, and you’ve got catastrophe.
‘Developer: it starts with ‘D,’ like ‘devil’ and ‘demon,’
“If someone had said fifty years ago that I would finance the building of Arcosanti from the proceeds of windbell sales, I would have told them they are crazy.”
“Arcosanti’s residences are tiny as monks cells and almost as frugal” – reporter for Australia’s “Beyond 2000” (1980’s)
“Arcosanti’s residences are tiny as monks cells and almost as frugal” – reporter for Australia’s “Beyond 2000” (1980’s)
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